A Quick Whirl Around The Fracking World: 2 Oct 2014

*Arctic.Russia’s Rosneft and Exxon Mobil have struck oil in the Arctic, so now (but not before, mind you) Exxon has decided to “wind down” its operation in light of US sanctions against Russia and specifically against Rosneft’s leader, Igor Sechin. It’s wonderfully light oil, they say, and will yield 100 million tons of the stuff plus lots of gas.

*USA. Rail cars were diverted from hauling the Midwest’s bumper harvests this year in favor of hauling crude oil from the Bakken. Now the nation’s “river freight system [is] near breaking point as huge harvest looms”. There’s a truck shortage, “low barge inventory, and a dilapidated lock system”–and there’re also the demands of “producers of crude oil from the nation’s shale boom” for use of the waterways. Food costs up, yeah, but, hey, we got oil.

*USA. Since the feds “leave it up to individual companies to decide how often to test crude [oil] in order to gauge its danger”, the American Petroleum Institute has stepped forward and issued new standards all on its own. Why are the feds not in the lead on this?

A Quick Whirl Around The Fracking World: 2 Oct 2014

*Arctic.Russia’s Rosneft and Exxon Mobil have struck oil in the Arctic, so now (but not before, mind you) Exxon has decided to “wind down” its operation in light of US sanctions against Russia and specifically against Rosneft’s leader, Igor Sechin. It’s wonderfully light oil, they say, and will yield 100 million tons of the stuff plus lots of gas.

*USA. Rail cars were diverted from hauling the Midwest’s bumper harvests this year in favor of hauling crude oil from the Bakken. Now the nation’s “river freight system [is] near breaking point as huge harvest looms”. There’s a truck shortage, “low barge inventory, and a dilapidated lock system”–and there’re also the demands of “producers of crude oil from the nation’s shale boom” for use of the waterways. Food costs up, yeah, but, hey, we got oil.

*USA. Since the feds “leave it up to individual companies to decide how often to test crude [oil] in order to gauge its danger”, the American Petroleum Institute has stepped forward and issued new standards all on its own. Why are the feds not in the lead on this?

*AK. ConocoPhillips is exporting Alaskan oil to South Korea, as “the soaring amount of petroleum being pumped from U.S. shale formations through hydraulic fracturing” is overwhelming “pipelines and refiners and causing the price of U.S. oil to weaken, from Texas to North Dakota to Alaska.” If prices drop, so do oil taxes. Whatever—we’ll pay one way or the other.